The Effect of New Technology in the Engineering Industry: Cases of Control and Constraint

In: Work, employment and society: a journal of the British Sociological Association, Volume 2, Issue 3, p. 366-380

Abstract

The major concern in this paper is to examine the effect of computer numerical control on skill. The findings from research in three companies demonstrate that in the engineering industry, technical change can have both positive and negative effects on the utilisation of skill, and thus on levels of skill in the industry. The experience of technical change, whether positive or negative, is shared among groups of workers. Technical change potentially poses a threat to turners' skill and so they will defend those common interests in the face of that change.